United Way halfway to goal
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Originally published 12:52 p.m., October 18, 2007
Updated 12:52 p.m., October 18, 2007
The United Way is more than halfway to its goal just four weeks into its annual fund-raising campaign.
So far, $354,814.01 in pledges have been returned, according to Larie Schoap, drive chair who set a goal of $610,000 at the Sept. 18 kickoff luncheon.
“A lot of businesses are having us do presentations this year that we haven’t done in the past,” Schoap said, “so that is very encouraging.” In coming weeks, Schoap said, she will do more workplace presentations in Emporia and will be visiting area towns. “We service seven surrounding counties, so those residents also use United Way agencies. We want them to understand what the agencies do in their community,” Schoap said.
Despite raising $600,000 in last year’s campaign, $85,000 in requests from United Way agencies went unfunded.
Volunteers will start picking up packets from workplaces in the next couple of weeks, and the campaign will end with a celebration luncheon in the second week of January.
The campaign got off to a good start in September when the month-long Pacesetter campaign raised $272,500.
Schoap also encouraged people to take part in the United Way Restaurant Days over the next couple of weeks, when restaurants will donate a part of a Thursday’s sales to the United Way. Restaurants that have scheduled events include:
• Today — Gambinos at 1003 Industrial Road.
• Oct. 25 — KFC at 2613 Candlewood Drive.
• Nov. 1, Grand Central in Cottonwood Falls.
Also, donations may be sent to United Way of the Flint Hills, 702 Commercial St., Emporia , KS 66801.
yellow82 (anonymous) says...
I am happy to say the company I work for orded Gambinos today for the staff without even knowing that part of today's proceeds would support the United Way. Kudos to us.
October 18, 2007 at 3:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
yellow82 (anonymous) says...
And kudos to everyone else who has supported this campaign.
October 18, 2007 at 3:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
gr8ggogli (anonymous) says...
How nice to hear UW is off to such a great start.
Perhaps that means they won't need to call an emergency meeting of agency directors at the end of the year like they did last year, where they assigned each person several local businesses who had NOT contributed to UW in the past several years.
Perhaps that means the local businesses and other entities (like schools and ESU) that regularly support UW won't find it necessary to strongarm their employees into "giving".
A lot of people contribute to the community in a lot of different ways, many choosing to give directly to non-profit organizations, but prefer not to give to UW because of their overhead costs.
The whole point of contributing to UW is that UW can focus on fundraising, while the agencies funded by UW focus on their missions. But it seems these days that UW doesn't want to fund ANY agency fully, so the agencies have to spend increasing amounts of time fundraising.
Of course, we don't know how much each agency gets from UW. They don't tell us that. Do they?
And agency directors and board members are afraid to say anything negative about UW for fear of losing what funding they do get.
As for me, I'll be donating directly to the organizations I care most about. And you betcha I'm anonymous.
October 19, 2007 at 9:11 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
traceygraham (Tracey Graham) says...
1) Is there some way agencies can get feedback from UW regarding their budget requests? The last several years all we got was a dollar amount, without explanation as to why some programs were funded and others were cut. When we submit our budgets, we are required to justify how, in our eyes, our programs meet UW areas. If UW does not agree that these programs do meet their target areas, fine, they should tell us this. By NOT telling us this, we continue to spin our wheels needlessly. We should seek other funding for these programs and not continue to waste time trying to make UW happy.
2) Is there some way of letting all agencies know what proportion of funding requested EACH agency or each program received? It is my understanding that this used to be published in the Gazette, but that changed some years back. As it stands now, word only gets out via interagency rumor mills. Surely all can agree that rumors are not a good way to disseminate information, and are an excellent way of spreading false information.
For example, we hear rumors that the Community Investment Committee recommended a higher amount than that approved by the board; we hear rumors that the board approved a higher amount than the Community Investment Committee recommended, we hear rumors that votes were unanimous, we hear rumors that the votes were split, we hear rumors that there are board and/or committee members who feel our programs have no worth whatsoever, we hear rumors that they really really wish they could have given us more funding but there simply isn’t enough money, we hear that what we do is “duplication of services”, we hear rumors that all the other agencies are afraid to say anything because they fear getting their funding cut etc…
A written summary from the allocation committee and/or UW board would help squelch the rumor mill.
3) Another rumor mill issue: We have heard things that lead us to believe that UW has put pressure on some of our advertisers to NOT advertise with us. Rumors suck. But when an org does its business behind closed doors, it leads to unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable rumors.
October 20, 2007 at 2:23 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
gr8ggogli (anonymous) says...
tracey -you raise some interesting questions. how open to the public are the uw meetings, decisions, allocation levels, etc? uw tells us they "support" all these difffernt agencies but they don't tell us how much. do some get everything they ask for/need? do all get just 50% or less than what they need? how can a person find out?
October 22, 2007 at 9:10 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )